“Father hasn’t shared his plans with me in years and I have no idea what Chaz was talking about.”
Tanner’s snort of disbelief assured her of his opinion concerning that one. It wasn’t good. And of course he knew she was lying. Bastard’s sense of smell was off the damned charts.
Then, he really surprised her.
“Your father has two teams after you, both headed by loyal coyote Breeds. The order is dead or alive,” he informed her softly. “I’m going to ask you one more time. What do you know that your father is willing to kill you over?”
She felt the blood drain from her face. Damn, Cyrus was serious about this one. Not that she had expected anything less.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t lived with the threat of her own death hanging over her head for years now. She knew how dangerous Cyrus was, just as she had known that she couldn’t get away with betraying him forever. She couldn’t trust Tanner with that though. She couldn’t trust anyone except Jonas. He and the pride leader, Callan Lyons, were the only two Breeds that were without a doubt not a Tallant spy in Sanctuary. The information she held now was too important, too explosive, to trust to anyone but those two men.
“Who knows why Father does the things he does,” she finally said and sighed. “I’ve outgrown my usefulness to him, one would assume.”
“So he sent an assassin guaranteed to kill you mercifully, just because you had outgrown your usefulness? Because you made some mistakes?”
“Go figure. But to be fair, I’ve been messing up a lot lately. Why not let me go so I can ask him about it? Then I’ll get back to you.”
“No.” He crossed his arms over his chest as he smiled arrogantly. “I think I’ll keep you for a little while longer.”
“And Sanctuary has ordered this?”
“I think you know better than that. You don’t exactly have friends at Sanctuary, sweetheart.”
No kidding there.
“So I’m here for what reason?”
“Because I want you here.”
“Because you want me here?” she asked in surprise, a mocking laugh leaving her lips as she stared back at him. “For what? Excuse me for being just a bit surprised, Tanner, but you’re not exactly on the allies’ side of my personal contacts.”
“Does it matter why I want you here?” He frowned then. “You’re safe for the time being. Content yourself with that.”
“And my safety matters to you why?” None of it made sense. “Why the hell would you care if a dozen coyote Breeds were after me? You’re not making sense.” This was not part of the profile she had done on him over the years.
Tanner gave a good impression of the classic playboy, the lazy Breed raised outside of the labs, taught mercy, family and values. Bullshit. He was taught how to hide the killer he had become before Callan Lyons ever stepped foot in that New Mexico lab.
“I don’t want you dead before I have the chance to fuck you myself.”
“And once you’ve fucked me?” She forced the words past gritted teeth. Going to bed with this man would be the ultimate mistake.
“Would once be enough?” He moved forward slowly.
And she didn’t like that. She could feel the air thinning, his very presence taking up the oxygen, almost leaving her lightheaded.
“You’re very confident.” Too confident, and she was weak. She could sense her body’s weakness to him and she hated it.
“Is it merely confidence?”
Scheme steeled herself for his touch, for his fingers as they touched her collarbone, moving slowly over the slight ridge and sending a rapid fire of response racing through her body.
“I won’t have sex with you.”
“Yes, you will. It’s just a matter of time.” His eyes gleamed with the knowledge.
“And you have all this time to waste? Don’t you have a job at Sanctuary, Mr. Reynolds? News releases to send out, press conferences to prepare for?”
“I’m on vacation. Sanctuary allows those, you know.” His hand cupped her neck, his fingers curling around her nape. “We’re not in the labs anymore, Scheme. No matter the attempts your father has made to have us returned there.”
“He doesn’t want your return, Tanner. He wants your death.”
His fingers tightened slightly at her statement as his unusual amber eyes stared directly into hers.
“How will it feel?” he asked her. “To get all sweaty and wet beneath one of the animals you’ve helped track? To feel my cock burying inside you. Taking you. Marking you. And I will mark you, Scheme. I’m going to come inside you so deep and so hard, you’ll never remember what it was like to lie with another man.”
It would feel like nothing she had ever known before. She knew it. Sensed it.
“I’m liable to puke,” she said and sighed, rolling her eyes at him as his narrowed on her. “That could get messy, Tanner.”
“Oh, we’re going to get messy all right,” he assured her, his smile tight. “Real messy, Scheme. But in ways you might not imagine.”
“No, Tanner.” Her hands slammed against his chest as he leaned forward. “Don’t do this.”
She could hear the desperation in her own voice, the fear.
“Why?”
His lips were close. Too close. The brush of them was like a whisper against her own, a heady temptation she had to fight to resist.
“Because you don’t really want me. You want to strike against me. Hurt me. That’s what the Council taught you.”
“Don’t.” His hand cupped over her mouth before she could say anything more. “The Council didn’t teach me to jack off watching you sleep in your bed. It didn’t teach me to shadow you, or to become bewitched by you. And it didn’t teach me to care if you lived or died. Until I find out the reasons for those anomalies, Scheme, you are stuck with me.”
He was snarling. Furious. She could see the flames of anger sparking alongside the lust in his eyes. And none of it made sense. Nothing should be there but killing rage. No emotion, no regret, and sure as hell no attempt to protect her.
“You watched me sleep?” She walked this edge of danger carefully.
“I watched you sleep, fuck, masturbate and stare out that damned skylight for almost ten years. Since the month you turned twenty, sugar,” he growled. “From the moment I figured out how to direct our fucking satellites where I wanted them, I’ve watched you.”
Watched her fuck. He had watched her each time she had brought a man to her bed, each time she had used her vibrator. She should be throwing up in disgust rather than creaming in excitement.
“Why are you doing this? Did Sanctuary somehow miss a psychopath in their ranks?” She jerked away from him, trying to hide her reaction as her fingers knotted in the towel. “Are you forgetting who I am, Tanner? Scheme Tallant. Remember me? General Cyrus Tallant’s daughter? His right hand. Breed killer.” She was pushing it and she knew it. Tempting her own death, and it wouldn’t be a painless death if Tanner were the one meting it out.
His nostrils flared, his eyes gleaming with predatory awareness as he advanced on her.
This was why she’d fought to avoid him throughout the years. Why she had made certain there wasn’t so much as a chance meeting until that stupid ball. It was in his eyes now, primal, primitive, the same hunger she had felt growing within herself throughout the years. The more she tracked him on the television, received reports about him, the more he had fascinated her.
“Are you forgetting how hot and wet you were in my hand?” he countered. “The feel of my fingers fucking you, stroking that tight little pussy until you came for me?”
He stopped stalking her, but only because her back met the stone wall and there was no place left for her to go.
“That was a mistake.” Oh yeah, big mistake. That was why every cell in her body was reaching out for him. Good going, Scheme, just keep up the good fight there, her inner voice of reason chided her.
“The mistake is in lying to me, pretty girl,” he growled, his eyes flashing with a dangerous mix of lust, danger and anger. “Now, we’ll assume the good general has decided his daughter is no better than his coyotes and you’ve just become a liability. So why stay?”
Ahh, the reasons. Just let her count them. Of course, it could take days.
“And go where?” she asked. “By the time I was strong enough to run, your people were free and many of them would have eagerly killed me if they had caught me. They would have hunted me. Just as my father would have hunted me.”
“You had enough information against him to turn evidence during the hearings in the Senate and secure your safety.”
Scheme gave him a droll stare. “I was twenty years old, and I was still fighting the conditioning Father had used to raise me. When you train a child rather than raise it, Tanner, you condition it to certain things. I was conditioned. By the time I had the strength to break away, it was too late. And I knew it. He would have never let me live. And he’ll be even more determined now to see me dead.”
To a point, it was the truth. Once she had found the strength to break her conditioning though, the hatred had been all she lived for. It was then that she had secretly met with Jonas Wyatt and made her bargain. In exchange for her complete safety when the time came, she would help him bring her father down. He had enough information now. And she had more that she had held back for insurance when that time came. She could have waited. She could have tried to gain the last vital pieces of information that she needed to access the inner sanctum of the Genetics Council, but her time had run out.
If she didn’t get away from him soon and get to Jonas, then it would be too late for the pride leader’s son. And if that happened, then the Breeds world would quickly go to hell in a handbasket. Because nothing would restrain their rage then.
Her time had run out. And Tanner was deceptive enough, merciless enough, that he could be trying to gain her trust for one reason only. To gain the information her father’s agent had sent, the location of the first Leo and his child. That information couldn’t get into the wrong hands. Until she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Tanner wasn’t her father’s spy, then she couldn’t trust. She couldn’t afford to ever trust her heart or her hunger again. Chaz had taught her better than that.
Her eyes were cold. The dark chocolate gaze was unemotional, uncaring. She could have been talking about the weather. But what he saw and what he could smell were two different things. His eyes saw a cold, hard shell. But he rarely depended on his eyes alone.
He could smell her pain, just as he could smell her fear and the anger she was tamping so deep inside her that it festered like an open wound.
She was fighting desperately to shut it all down. He could sense that. She had to obliterate all emotion to survive the darkness her father had placed inside her. And he couldn’t allow that. Smelling her fear made the animal inside him pace and thirst for blood. It did nothing to keep the man he was in control.
He knew all about conditioning and training. He had lived beneath Tallant’s guidelines for the first fifteen years of his life. As an animal. A weapon that had to be molded for effectiveness.
“Once you had the strength to break away, why was it too late?”
Her gaze flickered with shadows of deceit. He hated that deceit.
“I was already created,” she whispered then with a mocking smile, her gaze meeting his with icy knowledge. “It was too late. And it’s too late for this, Tanner. Go ahead and kill me. You’d be doing the world a favor. Wouldn’t you?”
“I won’t hurt you.” He forced the fury back and focused on his desire rather than his rage. On the hunger rather than the bleak memories he glimpsed in her eyes. “As a matter of fact, pretty girl…” He let his lips brush hers with the barest touch.
